Download a PDF of the 2016 Fall Planning Letter.

man with glasses and a grey suit and green tie smiling at the camera

Last year, we identified four priorities through which we would advance our strategic objective to establish the College of Arts & Letters (CAL) as a national leader in arts and humanities research and education for the 21st century: culturally engaged digital humanities, engaged scholarship in an interconnected world, integrated design, and media arts. Over the past year, we have made strategic investments in each of these areas with an intentional commitment to cultivating practices of inclusion as a matter of institutional habit.

This has enabled us to refine our approach in each priority area. What we first articulated in terms of culturally engaged digital humanities has now become a more focused initiative on Critical Diversity in a Digital Age that will anchor our digital humanities approach more broadly at MSU. We have advanced our commitment to engaged scholarship in an interconnected world through the establishment of the Center for Interdisciplinarity and by initiating an exploration and planning process for a School of Language Studies. We have strengthened the area of integrated design through strategic hiring in Experience Architecture, Graphic Design and Electronic Art . And through the MSU Media Arts Collaborative with the College of Communication Arts and Sciences and the College of Music, we have begun to create a culture of collaboration that has already had an impact on our media arts programs across the University.

Below, we outline how these priorities dovetail with and reinforce the three priorities outlined in the Provost’s Spring 2015 LEAD session.